Jose Quinonez, 2016 MacArthur Fellow, Mission Asset Fund, San Francisco/CA, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016.

In the years following the sub-prime and related financial crises, bankers got a thorough drubbing in the global imagination. But we have been depending on bankers in all our business and conservation activities all these years and never yet met a bad apple in the bunch. Still, kind of surprised to see a banker chosen for the prestigious awards we follow each year.  This year we are happy to see some extra coverage of the recipients of this award, as the following illustrates:

A Newly Minted MacArthur Genius on the Financially ‘Invisible’

“I wanted to change the world. I didn’t think I was going to do that by being a loan servicer.”

José Quiñonez has spent most of the past decade helping the financially invisible build credit and obtain loans.Last week, his commitment to helping low-income communities, which are so often excluded from the mainstream banking system, earned him $625,000 in the form of a MacArthur genius grant. He’s one of 23 this year to win genius grants, which are given to people who have demonstrated unusual creativity, are highly accomplished in their field, and show they have significant potential.

Born in Mexico, Quiñonez came to the U.S. as a child after his mother died of cancer, having been unable to afford medical care; his father had passed away before that. Quiñonez is well acquainted with the hardships that can face poor, undocumented immigrants in this county. In 2007, he helped found the Mission Asset Fund, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that helps those without access to the financial system build credit and get zero-interest loans. Quiñonez has successfully expanded the organization and enlisted several nonprofit partners since its inception.

I spoke with Quiñonez about winning the award, how his childhood shaped his current path, and how the U.S. is progressing when it comes to serving underbanked populations. The interview below has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Gillian White: First, congratulations! This is huge—how are you feeling?

José Quiñonez: I’m loving it. We should’ve been been talking about this issue years ago.

White: I heard that when you got the call about the award you thought it was a joke?

Quiñonez: [laughs] I did! The start of the call was odd. They wanted to verify my identity so they asked, “Are you José? Do you live here? Do you work there?” I thought it was a scam. It was one of those moments where time stretches. I know about the foundation, I know what they do, but I didn’t know I was under consideration. Then they started reading why they selected me, why I was getting the reward, and that was very emotional.

White: It’s a pretty big deal for someone who fights for the invisibility of a group of people to win such a prestigious, highly visible award. What does this do for the populations you serve?

Quiñonez: What I really want to do with this, what I’m hoping for, is that this will make people fundamentally question their assumptions of poor people—that poor people are lazy, or that it’s really their fault, or they just don’t know what they’re doing so we need to teach them. These assumptions are deeply entrenched and lead to the policies we create, the programs we create. We need to recognize that those assumptions are wrong. We need to stop blaming the victim…

Read the whole interview here.